Extending mobile communications network coverage, increasing network capacity, and increasing the variety of devices served are all aspects for which improvement is desired of next generation mobile communications networks. This increase in capacity and variety of devices may in turn lead to a significant increase in the number of communications devices served by mobile communications networks. For example, the increased capacity and coverage of next generation communications networks such as 3GPP long term evolution (LTE) have led to proposals for the use of machine type communications (MTC) devices. MTC devices are typically low-data rate devices that only occasionally communicate with infrastructure equipment in a communications network and may for example be smart utility meters and information gathering devices in cars or personal medical equipment. Accordingly, because of the potential ubiquity of MTC devices, their use may lead to large increases in the number of communications devices being served by a network. Consequently, congestion of the network may be more likely to arise and communications devices may be unable to receive a desired quality of service from the network. This may occur in particular in the uplink from communications devices to infrastructure equipment where network resources are required to be requested before transmission of user data. For instance, if a large number of communications devices wish to transmit in the uplink, a large number of resource requests may be transmitted within a short period of time. This may lead to congestion and inefficient resource allocation, repeated requests for resources and a reduction in the quality of service provided to communications devices.